


Full Circle

by Setcheti



Series: The Last Chance Diner [4]
Category: Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied Slash, Not OTP Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:33:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1416934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deans little circle of regulars at the Last Chance had expanded quite a bit...sometimes in surprising ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

**Author's Note:**

> The medium-sized AU huffed impatiently. “If you were writing faster, I would be a very large AU by now. Look at all the good parts you haven’t gotten to yet!” To which the author replied, “Who’s typing out this story, you or me?”

Dean’s little circle of regulars at the Last Chance Diner had expanded a bit during his second year of working there thanks to his original not-quite-a-Loner on the old Eagle, Steve. Sometimes Steve brought his friend and co-worker Clint the Former Spook in with him; or sometimes it was Bruce the Scientist, who was always headed right back out again to visit his friend Cecil the Crazy Radio Guy at the power station. And then one night Bruce had showed up with Cecil in tow, without Steve, because he said Cecil needed to get out more and eat real food.

Cecil had not been at all what Dean had expected after hearing his radio broadcasts. Far from being a shabby, long-haired recluse, he was a dapper-looking man about Dean’s height, nearly half a foot taller than Bruce, and his prematurely white hair and the slight stoop to his shoulders should have made him look older than the scientist – they were, Bruce had mentioned once, the same age – but didn’t. His brown eyes behind his purple-framed glasses were sharp but sad; not haunted like Bruce’s eyes sometimes were, but just sad in the way of a man who’s worn his grief into comfortable softness like a much-loved shirt. He’d initially greeted Dean with a handshake that was more of a hand-clasp, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry,” he’d apologized, the radio-familiar voice soft and almost shy. “I never thought anyone would pick up my broadcasts on a regular basis and be bothered by them. I was just talking to the air, I didn’t mean to worry anyone.”

“Hey, that’s okay,” Dean had responded immediately, giving him a lopsided grin. “Once Bruce here told me your town wasn’t a real place, I kind of started enjoying the show – you come up with some wild stuff, man. I got hooked pretty quickly, wanting to see what you’d come up with next.”

That made Cecil laugh and blush. “Yeah, turns out you aren’t the only one,” Bruce told him with a grin, steering his much-taller friend to a seat at the counter. “We found out he has a fan-following online like you wouldn’t believe. One of the local ranchers’ kids must have picked up the broadcast and started recording and sharing it.” He took a seat of his own, bumping Cecil with his shoulder as he sat down. “They even make stuff for it. I bought a t-shirt.”

Cecil rolled his eyes. “I am going to find out who that child is and…send them to live in Desert Bluffs,” he said. “There is _no way_ that likeness is just a coincidence, they have to have seen me somewhere and taken a picture.”

“Accurate down to the color of his glasses,” Bruce confirmed for Dean’s benefit. He was still grinning, though. “But I checked and they all think he’s a fictional character, so that’s not the bad thing it could be.” He leaned his elbows on the counter. “What’s the special tonight?”

“Roast beef and gravy,” Dean told him. “The biscuits are fresh, but the pie is plain old apple from the freezer, sorry.”

“Baked biscuits?” Cecil wanted to know. When Dean nodded, he beamed. “I’ll have biscuits.”

“He’ll have the special and so will I,” Bruce corrected, and shook his head when Cecil pouted at him. “No, I said real food and I meant it. But I’ll get you extra biscuits to take home so you’ll have them tomorrow. He doesn’t have a kitchen, just a little hot-plate setup and a very tiny refrigerator,” he explained to Dean. “Almost everything he eats comes out of a box or a can.”

“Well, tonight’s carrots came out of a can,” Dean admitted. “The produce trucks haven’t been by in a couple of weeks – they said they’d had a bad season, they might have run out of stuff already. I’m ordering tomorrow, though, so I’ll confirm that with the supplier and see what we can get to make up for it. They don’t actually sell fresh stuff, but I might be able to convince them to, I don’t know, stop at the grocery store and bring me a bag of squash or something.” He winked at Cecil. “Been there with the hot-plate, man, it gets old after a while. Anything else you’ve been wanting but can’t keep out there?”

“Chocolate milk?”

“I can do that,” Dean told him. “Bruce?”

“Water for me, I…can’t have caffeine.”

He almost flinched when he said it, to Dean’s utter surprise, and Cecil frowned. “He _wants_ soda,” the taller man contradicted, almost sharply. “Root beer?”

“Does not have caffeine,” Dean confirmed. “We have the cheap stuff, though, not the really good kind that comes in a bottle.”

Bruce was blinking at Cecil. “I haven’t had soda in years.”

“Yeah, I know.” Cecil blinked back at him. “Isn’t it about time you stopped punishing yourself in petty little ways?”

“I…” Bruce swallowed hard. “Yeah, I…root beer would be good.” He sort of shook himself. “It’s been so long, I wouldn’t know the cheap stuff from the good stuff anyway.”

Dean resolved right then and there to also ask the delivery guys to pick him up some decent root beer while they were getting vegetables and fresh pie material. “You got it,” was all he said, though. And if the minute he turned away Bruce sniffed and leaned into the one-armed hug Cecil was quick to give him, Dean pretended he didn’t notice.

Although he couldn’t help but notice that the next time Bruce came in…those eyes didn’t look quite so haunted anymore.   

 

It didn’t take long before Cecil became one of Dean’s weekly regulars, pulling in on his little electric Vespa every Wednesday night after his ‘show’ to get dinner. Sometimes Bruce was waiting for him, and after a while Bruce started coming in with him because the scientist had apparently decided to split his time between living in Malibu and living at the power station. Steve was obviously and openly delighted by this development, and he started showing up on the odd Wednesday himself sometimes to join them. Cecil treated him like he was Bruce’s little brother, which Dean had started to notice was the way Bruce acted toward Steve, too. And it made him happy to see that, because he knew Steve’s family was gone, like his own family was, but Steve was the kind of guy who needed people to fuss over and be fussed over by. And families, even fucked-up families like Dean’s had been, were good for that sort of thing.

Dean had wondered a few times what the rest of Steve’s team was like, although he didn’t feel like he could ask because of the kind of work they all did. Clint and Bruce and Steve mentioned Tony the Tech Guy pretty often, and they appeared to like him even though some of the things they said made Dean think the guy was at least a part-time pain in everyone’s ass, and half of that quite possibly on purpose. Sometimes they’d mention a guy named Thor who wasn’t around all the time – ‘family responsibilities’ and an out-of-town girlfriend were the reasons Steve had given – and even more rarely the name Natasha had come up. Natasha, Dean had figured out, was the red-haired cartoon-badass chick who was dating Steve’s former best friend, and although she occasionally still worked with the team she lived in New York, not with the rest of them in Malibu. And the look Clint had gotten on his face once when he’d mentioned her made Dean think she must have meant something to him once upon a time, too.

It also didn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that none of them ever mentioned Steve’s former best friend by name; they just called him ‘Natasha’s partner’ in a way that sounded like he was something everyone involved wanted to scrape off of their shoes. Except for Steve, of course, who said it in a perfectly flat tone that indicated he was putting the whole thing behind him and wasn’t going to let it fuck him up any more than it already had. Dean felt ridiculously proud of Steve every time that happened. Privately, though, he still would have liked to take ‘Natasha’s partner’ out and kick his ass around a little, just enough to make sure he understood that Dean did not think very much of him dicking his buddy over that way.

Of course, that wasn’t ever going to happen unless Natasha’s partner came to the diner – which was not a place Dean particularly wanted him to be, overdue ass-kicking aside. Former best friends, whether his or Steve’s or anyone else’s, did not belong at the Last Chance. If one of them happened to show up, though…well, Dean figured he was going to have to explain some things about himself to Steve eventually anyway. He just didn’t want to do it anytime soon.

 

One evening about an hour after Dean had opened for the night’s business, a car pulled up in front of the diner. It was still light out, so Dean got a really good look at the car – and it was a good car to look at, at least for a car guy like him. It was fire-engine red with a sleek body and wide, road-hugging tires, and the engine purred like a kitten. A custom job, had to be. He halfway expected the driver to be some rich yuppie business type, but the guy who got out was almost exactly the opposite; short, bearded, dressed in worn jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and beat-up Docs. He had the Ray-Bans, though, and the skeptical look that said he didn’t expect much from a place that looked like the Last Chance, so Dean gave up trying to categorize him other than identifying that he wasn’t Lost, Stubborn, or a Loner. No guy with a car like that could be a Loner, no way in hell.

The guy swung in through the diner’s door like he owned the place, more than a hint of a swagger in his step. Dean grinned at him. “Hey. I hope you’re not out here to drag race, State Highway Patrol’ll have the ticket half-written out the minute they see that beauty. Custom?”

The guy snorted and took off his glasses. He was older, probably closing in on fifty. “Yeah, built her myself – and they’d have to catch me first, which I guarantee you they could not do.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, probably not – the state doesn’t give them very good cars, not out here. I helped them soup one up for catching the last bunch of drag racers, though, so if Luke is out tonight he might give you a run for your money.” He folded his counter-polishing towel out of the way. “What can I do for you?”

“Just coffee, for now.” The guy sat down at the counter and watched Dean get the coffee. “So you’re a car guy too, huh? What’ve you got?”

Dean made a face. “I had a ’67 Impala…” The guy whistled, and he had to grin again. “Yeah, she was a beaut. I had to scrap her, she got…well, she was done, let’s put it that way. You can only fix so much, you know?”

“Do I ever.” The guy sipped his coffee a little bit warily, then took a bigger drink once he realized it was actually good. “What’ve you got now?”

Dean shrugged. “Nothin’. Not like I could replace my baby – she’d been my dad’s before she was mine. I’ll get something else someday, but right now it’s not like I need one.”

“Yeah, this place is halfway between nowhere and nowhere, isn’t it?” The guy took another drink. “You make good coffee.”

Dean shrugged again. “Hey, I have to drink it too. I always figured places that make bad coffee, it’s someone who either just can’t taste it anymore or they never drink it at all.”

That made the guy laugh. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” He looked around. “I’ve heard you have pie.”

“Peach today, and hot out of the oven an hour ago,” Dean confirmed. Heard? Hmm, so this guy knew someone who’d been to the Last Chance before. He cut a piece of pie and brought it over, and watched the guy sample the pie the same way he had the coffee – which he took the opportunity to refill. He shrugged when the guy raised a questioning eyebrow. “Bottomless cup – on the coffee, anyway. This ain’t Starbucks.”

The guy snorted. “Thank God for that. One of the ten thousand of them in Malibu was offering monkey-shit coffee for a while – coffee beans someone picks out of monkey shit and then charges for like they were dipped in gold. I started getting my coffee elsewhere at that point, I was afraid they’d get the beans mixed up and I’d end up drinking monkey-shit coffee by accident.”

Dean shook his head. “Who’d come up with the idea of picking coffee beans out of monkey shit in the first place? And then making coffee out of them?”

“Someone with a severe personal problem – or an overabundance of monkeys on their coffee plantation. At least, that’s what I thought. One of the guys I work with said he thinks they just saw all the stupid people lining up around the block to buy every new must-have foodie-fad and figured what the hell, they’d play a joke on them.” He smiled around his next bite of pie, though. “Of course, that same guy can’t understand why our old-lady neighbors keep hitting on him when ‘all he’s doing is being nice to them’.”

And Dean had to grin; there was only one person in Malibu who had that problem _and_ who knew about the Last Chance. “Steve, right?” When the guy nodded, he did too. “Thought so – he’s got a unique way of looking at stuff sometimes. Now, you don’t look like a Thor, so my guess would be you’re Tony, the tech guy?”

The guy almost choked on his coffee. “I…they…he told you I was the _tech guy_? That’s really what he told you?”

Dean shrugged, backing off half a step under the guise of reclaiming his towel to wipe the counter. “Hey, man, I don’t ask what it is you guys actually do, and they keep things real general when they talk about work.”

“They…” Tony’s brown eyes narrowed, then widened in realization. “Oh right, you’ve also been exposed to Clint and Bruce, who tend to take their amusement wherever they can find it. Steve doesn’t, but they’re a corrupting influence on him. Although ‘Tony the Tech Guy’ does have kind of a ring to it…don’t tell any of them I said that, though, I want to make them think they need to work to get back in my good graces.” 

Dean just nodded and kept fake-cleaning the counter, and Tony finished his pie and waved off more coffee. “No, I’m already at my ten-cup limit for the day, and Bruce will just know when he comes back tomorrow if I’ve been indulging while he’s off getting nookie in Night Vale. Not that I’m not glad he’s finally getting some, because I really am really happy about that, but he has a tendency to nag. And I can’t get back at him because he might kick my ass.” Dean raised an eyebrow and held up one hand at Bruce-height – which was about the same as Tony-height, coincidentally – and Tony’s eyes widened again. “Oh shit, that’s right, you don’t…okay, yeah, Brucie is the mildest-mannered thing on the planet unless someone really pisses him off. And that doesn’t happen too often anymore, although he can pull it up when he needs it. Hopefully he won’t ever need it out here.”

“We really don’t have too many stupid people living out this way,” Dean reassured him. “Really, nobody gives a shit. The people out here know they can count on their neighbors if something happens, but they don’t get into each others’ business, if you know what I mean. The desert is pretty laid-back, live and let-live. I think a lot of people move out here for that, actually; they just want to be left alone.”

Tony stood up, dug out a few bills and tucked them under the edge of the plate. “Is that why you’re out here?”

Dean didn’t react to that, because he’d had a feeling it was coming; after all, the guy had already as good as said he wasn’t out there to pick up Bruce. “I had a job…kind of like the one you guys do,” he responded, figuring Clint had probably said something to the rest of their team about it anyway. “I got tired of fighting, I was just done. So yeah, I came out here because the job wouldn’t follow me out this far, and so far it hasn’t.”

Tony mouthed the words ‘so far’ with a frown, but it was a thoughtful frown not an angry one and he didn’t put his thoughts about it into words. What he said instead was, “Has he ever mentioned Bucky?”

His stance had suddenly become tense, almost confrontational, which surprised Dean. “Someone actually named their kid that? Mean bastards.”

The older man rolled his eyes. “Since his name is James Barnes and they picked that as his nickname? Yeah, doesn’t make sense to me either. Neither here nor there, though.” He took a deep breath. “They ever mention anything about Clint’s former partner Natasha’s new partner, then?”

Dean couldn’t help it, his eyes narrowed. “You mean Steve’s ‘former best friend’?”

“Yeah, that would be Bucky.” Tony became even more tense. “So he’s never said why former?”

Dean shrugged. “Sounded like a love triangle to me, his buddy took his girl. I didn’t ask for details, there’s just no sense opening old wounds – and I don’t think his are all that old.”   

“You might be surprised…but no, those aren’t.” Tony gave him an unreadable look. “He won’t tell you, probably not ever – he won’t talk about it with anyone, not even us, and we all not only know exactly what happened but we’re on his side and he knows it. You could say it was a love triangle, yeah, but the problem wasn’t Steve and Bucky both wanting Natasha…it was Bucky wanting Natasha and Steve wanting Bucky. Who had already been there at least once, if you get my meaning. So All-American-boy Steve decided the best thing to do was be honest about his feelings with his ‘best friend’.”

And then he stopped, waiting for Dean’s reaction. Which at first was flabbergasted, because Dean had honestly never considered that possibility. Now that he was, though, some things were starting to make a whole lot more sense. “I’m guessing ‘Bucky’ didn’t take that too well?”

The older man shook his head. “That would be a massive understatement, actually. He went off like a fucking bomb.”

Dean felt an uprush of rage so strong the scar on his arm tingled. He forced the feeling down. “Did that bastard hurt Steve?”

“Yes,” Tony confirmed, visibly relieved. “And then Steve stopped Bruce from killing him, because it would have been open season on Bruce if he hadn’t.”

Dean pulled the money out from under the plate and went to put it in the cash register. “I’m pretty sure Bruce didn’t give a damn, at that point – I know I wouldn’t have.” He put the cup on the plate and moved it off to one side. “So you drove all the way out here just to make sure it wouldn’t happen again, huh?” Tony nodded hesitantly, not quite tensing up again, and Dean quirked a grin and shook his head. “I won’t tell him you were here unless he asks. But if ‘Bucky’ ever shows up…well, I’ve thought for a while now that the bastard’s next scheduled ass-kicking was waaay overdue, so he’ll get that instead of pie.”

Tony’s mouth dropped open. “He’s a trained assassin.”

Dean shrugged. “I’m trained too, probably better than he is – assassins are taught to kill regular people. I'm used to having tougher opponents than that.”

The older man took a moment to process that, then shook his head. “While Bucky does need to have the shit repeatedly kicked out of him for more reasons than I can even tell you about, the guy he works for values the worthless bastard enough to protect him. So if he ever does shows up here…well, if he did it would probably be a setup and he definitely wouldn’t be alone. You'll need backup.” He fished a card out of his jeans and slapped it down on the counter where the plate had been. “My number, if I don’t answer Jarvis will – he’s British and sarcastic and he can never not get hold of me.” He quirked a hard smile. “He also adores Steve, so he’ll be very nice to you.”

There was an implied threat in that, and the implication of something else, both of which Dean accepted without a blink. “Thanks. Hopefully I won’t ever have to call, though.”

Tony nodded sharply. “I hope you don’t either. But I learned a long time ago not to trust hope.”

And then he was gone, and the red car was purring out onto the highway, where it proceeded to turn into a red blur and possibly came close to breaking the sound barrier. Dean tucked the card away – it was plain and white and just had _Tony_ scrawled on it with a phone number scrawled underneath – where it wouldn’t get lost and then went to wash the plate and cup. And think about this new wrinkle in his situation. He and Steve were friends. But Tony seemed to think Steve might have feelings that were moving beyond friendship, and how did Dean feel about that?

Dean felt worried, was how Dean felt. He leaned on the counter, staring out the windows at the sun setting behind the rim of the desert. He really liked Steve. He could see wanting to be more than friends with Steve, he could see it really easily – and wouldn’t that have shocked his family, the idea that a skirt-chaser like him could be interested in a relationship with another guy. That wasn’t the problem, though. The problem was that Steve wasn’t even thirty yet, and if his job didn’t kill him he had another forty or fifty years of life left.

But Dean had a hell of a lot longer than that, because he just wasn’t getting any older.

 

True to his word, Dean didn’t tell Steve that Tony had been there – because Steve didn’t ask. Bruce, however, had come marching in a week later, by himself. “He came here, didn’t he?”

Dean didn’t have to ask who he meant. “Yeah. Did he get a ticket when he left? Because he pulled out onto the highway doing what looked like Mach 1.”

Bruce snorted. “He just drives like that – and he has an onboard computer that tells him if there are police within range, gives him time to slow down before they catch him.” He sank down onto one of the stools. “How much damage did he do?”

Dean grinned and shook his head. “He didn’t – kind of surprised me, but he was just worried about Steve getting hurt again.”

The scientist’s eyes got wide. “He told you about _that_?”

“I’m glad he did,” Dean assured him. “I thought Steve’s ‘former best friend’ needed an ass-kicking before, now I think he may need two or three of them.”

“Oh believe me, he needs even more than that.” Bruce slumped, elbows on the counter. “Damn Tony, anyway. I know his heart was in the right place…but if you’d taken it badly Steve would have never forgiven him.”

Dean cocked his head. “So Steve…”

“Likes you as more than a friend?” The scientist chuckled. “Yeah, he’s definitely heading that way, he’s just fighting it – for obvious reasons. Clint and I knew it would be okay, even if he ever got to the point where he could say something to you and you weren’t interested, but Tony’s…well, he’s been burned a lot. I should have known he’d have to see for himself.”

“It’s okay, Bruce, really,” Dean assured him again, leaning on the counter himself. “I’d never hurt Steve if I could help it, you know that. And I was surprised, but I’m not uninterested. I just…well, there’s a lot he doesn’t know about me, and not all of it’s good. And some of it’s…strange. I’m worried about that.”

To his surprise, Bruce just smiled and patted his hand. “Don’t be. There’s a lot you don’t know about him, either. Not to mention, he’s not as naïve as everyone thinks he is – and by everyone I mean Tony – and he’s one of the few people I know who accepts everyone he meets at face value. Steve doesn’t care about anyone’s past – and he doesn’t blame people when it shows back up and tries to bite them, either. Really, Dean, you don’t have anything to worry about. And if you start worrying about…other things, just ask Cecil. Nothing but nothing embarrasses him.”

Dean was still blushing when Bruce left. 'Other things’ weren’t something he had been worrying about…but now he was, just a little. Because interested and experienced were _not_ the same thing. And the things Dean thought he knew...

For the first time in nearly two years, Dean _really_ wished he could get on the Internet.


End file.
